Red Hat's OpenStack Tech Leadership Discusses Cloud Direction [VIDEO]

Mark McLoughlin is a well-known figure in the OpenStack world, having been identified as the leading code committer to the project in 2013. McLouglin has recently shifted his in-job responsibility away from just code to product development.

In a video interview with ServerWatch, McLoughlin details his role at Red Hat and how OpenStack is shaping up for the year ahead. McLoughlin was the first OpenStack developer at Red Hat and tried to help make the project successful. In his new role, product development is a key focus.

"I have an overarching technical responsibility for OpenStack, whether it's design decisions internally or working with partners," McLoughlin said.

Part of Red Hat's overall OpenStack efforts is the RDO community distribution. Over time the goal of RDO is for it to become analogous to how Fedora Linux works in relation to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which would be for RDO to help evolve into the community basis that flows up into the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) OpenStack Platform product.

Red Hat has multiple products within its Infrastructure division, including the CloudForms management solution and the OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service product. McLoughlin noted that OpenStack is a key part of a broader portfolio but still stands on its own as well.

"You can build a cloud with the individual projects, but if you build a cloud with the entire portfolio, you get a whole lot more value out of it," McLoughlin said.

In terms of the continued development and expansion of OpenStack services, there are a number of new capabilities that are underway, including the Manila shared filed system service. Work is also ongoing for the Zaqar messaging service.